Black Cats
by ElasticBobaTurtle
Summary: He'd given it to her, his first smile, and it made her heart flutter frighteningly. Saisaku.


So it wasn't love at first sight.

But that wasn't what Sakura was asking for when she met him. That wasn't what she _wanted._ Love at first sight was superstition, she'd learned, just like black cats and broken mirrors and other childish nonsense. She'd learned the hard way, but she had learned it well, years ago when she first set eyes on a little raven-haired boy with a beautifully broken childhood.

And it wasn't love at second sight, either.

(Once he opened his mouth, it all went downhill from there.)

It probably wasn't until the hundredth time around that her eyes began to change. When his insults stopped stinging so much, and her punches became more playful than bone-breaking (though most of the time he wasn't so lucky). Ugly, her inner self insisted, really meant beautiful to him; he was just dyslexic in some ways and wouldn't admit it.

Of course, she had to teach him. He had so much to learn.

But then again, so did she, and somehow his strange and hollow ways touched something inside of her that had never been so startled before; he was different from anyone she had ever encountered. Even though his face and eyes were ghosts of Sasuke's, and his cold calculations, grace, poise all echoed his…he was different, and she wanted to awaken him. Wanted to touch his empty insides, and let him experience the things that people were meant to experience, like crying and laughing and screaming (_and kissing!_, chimed Inner Sakura, but she quickly crushed that notion with a fierce scowl-blush). He could never claim to be alive otherwise.

Even if she was emotionally weak, as everyone said, she was stronger than him in ways he couldn't even begin to fathom, and that made her secretly proud; because his books were only crutches, substitutions for the real thing. They couldn't go far. Nothing went beyond the pages and the paper-thin smiles he loved to wear.

So she made it her goal to teach him. She was doing it for herself, because she wanted a challenge. It wasn't for him. It wasn't because she cared for him, really…she could indulge being selfish once in a while. In fact, she _deserved_ it after all her years of stupid selflessness, chasing after the red-white fan and falling flat on her face in the dust. So she told herself, and so she believed.

For a while, that is.

That was before he smiled truly for the first time.

And the situation was so ironic, she couldn't help the lopsided smile that unfurled on her lips, too; because it was with blood on his face and on hers, and with his back dripping with ink and life liquid, that he turned and gave her his first real smile.

And for a moment, her heart stopped, and something squeezed painfully inside.

He was beautiful.

(Well, he had always been good-looking—not that she'd ever tell him—but this was different. She could see his _soul_.)

And the smile might have lasted only for a second or two before he turned away to slash at the enemy with his fiercely beautiful strokes—but it was branded in her mind, and she'd dream about it for sleepless nights long afterwards. Think, tossing and turning, about the way his lips curved beautifully up and the way his eyes showed a glimmer of something she'd never caught before in that resounding black.

He'd given it to her, his first smile, and the thought made her heart flutter frighteningly.

She wanted to talk to him about it, ask him why he never smiled like that in the open. Why he always chose to put up a front. Why he paraded the streets with his loathsome plastic one that was always there just to be there and not because there was real joy driving it.

She thought of so many ways she could approach him with this maddening mystery. Should she do it subtly or bluntly? Gently or directly? How would he react? Would he push her away for asking such a question? Because that, she found, was what she feared the most.

Because that, she recalled, was exactly what Sasuke had done.

But then, Sai was not Sasuke. That was something Sakura had always made sure she kept straight in her mind, no matter _how _much they looked alike.

Because that was probably the only thing keeping her from falling in love with him.

-

Anghh...this has been stewing in my documents for several months. but yeah, I really wish I could actually read the manga so I could have a better handle on sai's character, haha.  



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